This is a sample blog set up to function as an art web site. The benefit of this is that the basic WordPress.com blog (like this one) is free. A web site requires a hosting service plan. An upgrade to a WordPress blog that allows more customization costs just $15 a year – a typical web site hosting plan costs $8 – $15 a month. Of course unless you set up the blog yourself, there is still the initial cost to pay the designer to set up the blog, but once that’s done, annual costs are minimal.
You can also register a domain, www.janeartist.com for example, that can be set up to automatically forward to your blog. That way, on your business cards, press releases and other marketing materials, you can say: “find my work at www.janeartist.com” and people won’t have to remember your janeartist.wordpress.com site address. Domain registrations are approximately $10 a year.
I set this sample blog up to see how it would work – I’ve had artists ask me about creating web sites for them. I like this concept quite a bit. It’s less expensive for the artist and less work for me, as the artist can do many of the site updates (events calendar, announcements, add new images, etc.) on their own with little or no training, depending on how much they already know about blogging. I enjoy creating web sites, but would rather not have the burden of the regular updates. And if the artist can make those updates themselves, they’re not having to pay someone else to do that job.
Find out more about the features you get with a basic WordPress blog.
If you’re interested in having me create a blog for you, please send me an e-mail: annranlett [at] gmail.com
